


edge of mercy

by altilis



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Dubious Consent, M/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 08:39:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13314543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altilis/pseuds/altilis
Summary: Post-TLJ. Now Supreme Leader, Kylo deals with the consequences of Snoke's training as he tries to reclaim control over his own body and mind.





	edge of mercy

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [reserve](http://reserve.tumblr.com) for reading over this, as well as running NSFW headcanon friday, where [one of the asks](http://reserve.tumblr.com/post/169358430650/nsfw-headcanon-so-what-if-snoke-never-let-kylo) inspired this!

Snoke tells him not to, sometime after an exhausting day of drills and a heavy dinner when even kneeling on the rug is comfortable enough to tempt sleep. There's a part of Ben that thinks: how will he kriffing know?

"Of course, master," he says, not knowing what else to say and not having the energy to muster up something new. When Snoke dismisses him, Ben rocks slowly back up to his feet and takes his leave of Snoke's cabin, meandering down the quiet hallway to his own tinier, sparser cabin. (At least it's safe. At least it's his.)

He takes a shower. He lies down. He sleeps.

Ben wakes up with his cock half-hard; nothing new. In the dim early-cycle lights and the hazy warmth of his blankets, he could have been anywhere: his mother's penthouse, the Falcon, his hut, Luke's hut, that little outpost half way between the temple and Coruscant - 

He could be anywhere. And in these early mornings he feels _everywhere_ , half of him doesn't even exist, merged through and around the Force as it stretches through the flagship in all directions. There's so much life around him.

Lying haphazardly on his side, his hand slips down under the blankets and takes himself in hand, reveling in the peaks and valleys of the Force as he slowly strokes himself to full hardness, exhaling against his pillow. There's bright spots in the grey, spikes of emotion and vitality, and some pockets of something - something he doesn't understand in words but understands in feeling, as he flushes from head to toe and quickens his strokes. Sometimes it feels like he's drinking in someone else's feeling, tasting their energy, reminding him that he, too, can feel -- 

There's a knock on his door, a hard and quick-tempo _rap, rap, rap, rap,_ and his outstretched powers snap back, leaving him his own real self again. Ben stop, swears, and scrambles out of bed to pull on his trousers with a still-hard dick. He's barely pulled them up over his hips when the doors open, and he lunges into the foyer with his tunic in hand. 

"Master?" he breathes, confusion and disbelief at the visit holding for a second before the Force seizes him by the chest and jerks him to the floor at the center of the room and pins him there on his back. Pressure on his throat and chest keeps his breathing short and shallow, and the floor feels cold and stiff beneath his bare shoulder blades. 

He watches, helpless, as the one of the praetorian sets a chair for Snoke by the wall, and Snoke steps around him to take the seat. His soft slippers lie less than a meter away in Ben's periphery; he can't turn his head. 

"Young Solo," he says, disappointed. Ben feels himself flushing with shame this time with a tight, cold knot coiling in his stomach. What has he done now? How much longer can he continue to disappoint his master before he's turned out and abandoned again?

"What did I say, but yesterday? About chastity, about self-control?"

Ben struggles to recall the words, but they lie behind fear and exhaustion. He can't remember and can't say anything, and being caught between omission and confession feels worse still.

"You can't remember, can you?" Snoke sighs, his arm shifting, probably to bring his hand to his temple; not the first time he's been frustrated with Ben's progress. He feels awful. "Is that why you've disobeyed me? Simple ignorance?" 

The Force keeps him pinned there in restless, silent agitation for a few seconds longer before all at once the pressure disappears. Ben gasps deep, fills his lung with cool, dry air, and then rolls over. He scrambles to get onto his knees, facing Snoke, struggles to figure out what to do with his hands because he doesn't want to lean on them, or put them behind his back, or rest them on his knees. He's too nervous for all of that, and ends up just balling them into fists and digging them down into the meat of his thighs.

"Master," his voice cracks, and he's not sure how he can look more pathetic, "I won't--I won't do it again--" And even as the gears turn in his head about whether that's even possible, Snoke shifts again. Ben cringes, waiting.

"We both know that's a lie. You will, and soon."

Ben glances up. "No, I--"

" _Do not lie to me_." Snoke says with the Force bearing down with his words. Ben looks down again, swallowing hard. "I know the weaknesses of youth...but what master would I be if I allowed it to hobble you? To slow your training? You will have this indulgence--when I allow it."

What does that mean, Ben wonders desperately, eyes darting from Snoke's slippers to the door to the bedroom, left, and the small kitchenette, right. He swallows hard, again, not sure what Snoke expects of him. "May I--tonight?" he ventures.

"Tonight?" Snoke laughs, that dry, amused, knowing laugh that makes him feel yet more ignorant. "After how far you reached this morning? No, my young apprentice, you will have it now. Here." 

"Here?" His voice cracks again. "In front of you?" His voice is small and weak, and if he weren't so off-balance already he’d try to sound the man Snoke wants him to be.

"Are you afraid?" Snoke asks, and Ben thinks that must be what this feeling is, this cold creeping up from his fingertips, that make his hands tremble but the rest of his body stiff, the tightness of his throat, the wet feeling in his eyes that he rapidly tries to blink away. "I know your thoughts, your weaknesses, your desires; I know you better than you know yourself. Do you disagree?"

"No," he whispers, as he tries and fails to think of something else that he hasn't shared with Snoke, some small secret he's kept close. There's been too many times he's laid himself bare before the man, like his first night on this ship when he had simply closed his eyes and let his new master leaf through his thoughts, his memories, his inconsequential secrets (and it hadn't even hurt, like it had all been done before, like he was made to welcome it).

Snoke is wise, patient; Ben knows Snoke waits for him to come to his own conclusions and his own resolve - and through the fear strength does percolate up, slowly. His hands are still shaking as he starts to unbuckle this trousers, and he tries to breathe through the cold grip around his fluttering heart. He comes up on his knees to push his trousers past his hips, just enough, before sinking back on his heels.

His palm feels clammy and cold against his cock and his grip is tighter than he usually starts, but the hardness returns with only a few strokes and a dizzying rush of blood. It's almost as if he's shifted back into the Force again: seeing but unfocused, removed from his body, removed from the fear.

"Good," Snoke says from above him. Ben's face flushes from the heady warmth of approval, satisfying a craving he rarely acknowledges, though now everything feels close at hand - his self-loathing, his desperation, his determination - if he wanted to reach for any. If he didn't prefer being both more and less than himself, an apprentice meeting his master's favor.

As he pushes himself further, as the heat permeates over his skin and his breathing stays shallow for other reasons, he does feel himself open up to the Force again. Yet not gradually - not gently - no, he’s dragged from a fog into a dark waterfall, and he can distantly hear his own ragged gasp. The life that he felt before intensifies a thousand fold, stoked by anger and rage and despair, energy pouring into him so fast that he's choking, shaking, he's so close -- 

A vice-like pressure clamps around the base of his balls and Ben cries out, throwing his head back as the flow of pleasure, emotion, light narrow to a thin point inside him, denied. His spirit feels stretched thin trying to hold it back.

"Ask," his master says.

"Please."

" _Ask_."

"Please, master - I - " the corner of his eyes feel wet, his voice sounds broken, what is he here for, what does he need, "may I come?"

"You may." 

His chin drops to his chest, relief already from permission and the pressure relaxing around his balls, but then everything else races back to him, that cocktail of siphoned energy. Nothing holds it back now, and he feels barely human as he comes, shouting, that tension of his being snapped all at once and being washed away in the torrent of the Force.

\--

He's almost afraid of it after the last time, after how long it had taken him to push himself up from the floor, aching and dazed. Enough has happened since that he's been able to push it to the back of his mind and ignore it: he finished his preliminary training, won his master's approval, his trust, and shed his weaker self to grow into a new name, a new soul that’s twice as strong.

And yet he was no closer to finding Luke through all of it, and the fear started to fade into frustration.

"Kylo Ren," his master says at the end of a long evening briefing - empty house, no X-wing, no Luke - "is there something else you wish to say?"

He sets his shoulders back and clears his throat. One fists rests on his bent knee, the other hangs by his side. "Yes, master. I would like your permission, again."

\--

The image of Snoke's bifurcated body haunts the few quiet moments Kylo has between Hux's intense "get to know your empire (before you destroy everything)" training and resting. The memory doesn’t come with fear, and loathing isn’t accurate, either. He admires the surrealism of it, the way its birthed this ethereal reality around him, where it’s only ever him in his own head, occasional Force calls from a woman who refuses to talk to him (still) notwithstanding. The void is palpable and welcome.

The thought occurs to him in the middle of what is already a long, hot, indulgent shower: the water flows just so around his neck and down his front, he inhales a lung-full of warm steam, and lets five years - six years? How long has it been? - of tension melt from his shoulders.

He can stand here as long as he wants.

Kylo closes his eyes and tips his head back into the spray. He reaches up to run his fingers through his wet hair, fingers massaging at his scalp as the water roars in his ears. He breathes, steady and slow, as his hands move to the back of his neck, then sweep firm over his shoulders, palms digging into his chest. His fingernails scrape lightly over his own skin, one of them following the line of his scar, a hint of pain to cut through the velvet luxury of the wet heat.

He can touch himself however he wants.

Fingers splayed, palm heavy, Kylo feels the solid line of his sternum all the way to the flat plain of his abs. Against a little pressure he can feel the tight resistance of his own muscles, all the way past his navel to where a faint trail of black hair leads his hand lower and lower.

When he shifts to lean back against the wall, the spray flows across his front while his back presses up against cold metal; he welcomes the contrast, the little shiver it gives him as he wraps his hand around his cock. Slow strokes, careful but certain - he waits for the habitual tightness in his stomach to relax.

There’s three doors between him and the secured corridor. No one is going to interfere. 

When his body accepts that, he reaches out into the Force again: on his own, this time, drinking in everything at his leisure. There’s the familiar darkness, blossoms of anger and sadness and anxiety that permeate this flagship even in the best of times, but Kylo stretches out - he tastes happiness and laughter and satisfaction.

(He passes over a familiar bundle of determination and exasperation, now wrapped up in mild contentment. It is dinner time, after all.)

His grip tightens as his pace picks up, the corner of his thumb rubbing over and over that spot between the shaft and the hood. Maybe he should drag it out longer, see how long he can spoil himself before he gets bored, but he doesn’t want to resist the build - he doesn’t have to. He can have this one for himself, in his own time, as he wants it.

As Kylo edges closer, another habit lunges to the forefront of his mind: that he should ask before it’s too late and he goes too far and his master will have him pinned into the floor and stroked, touch without a hand, until he’s begging, screaming - 

His hand squeezes on the upstroke. He exhales slowly and focuses on the roar of the shower, the cascade of water that hits the floor around his feet. The present, the now - he’s alone, he needs no permission. His hold on the Force and all its pathways, his superficial connection with the galaxy - wavers.

Desperate, Kylo reaches out through those same avenues and draws even more of that raw energy into himself, pushes some of himself out into it, too, hoping that the flood and the trade will deflate the growing fear in his chest. He’s so close - he should ask - but he doesn’t need to - _there is no one to ask_ \- 

It’s not going to happen.

His concentration unravels all at once, his thoughts unphasing from the Force and snapping back to just him, the shower, and his useless hand. Kylo leans his head back against the wall, teeth gritting. He lets go and slams his fist into the shower wall beside his hip, buckling the metal.

\--

A few more days, a few more tries: in the shower, on the bed, after meditating on the floor of his bedroom. Nothing—the same frustration, the same need to receive something from a man who no longer exists. Even his targetless hatred leaves him frustrated.

Kylo starts to seriously consider what benefits he’s entitled to as Supreme Leader, whether by implication or code. There are a thousand planets where he could find someone to give him permission in anonymity - but would it work? With anyone? Hopefully. Or he might as well fly himself into a star than suffer another hopeless night and humiliation.

\--

He woke up resolved to go planetside, any planet. His main obstacle sits across the breakfast table from him, prattling on about status updates and decisions he wants Kylo to rubber stamp. As he listens, Kylo wonders if Hux laid out plans like this for Snoke, too, or does he assume Kylo needs to have operations spoon-fed to him?

“...and then we must have a meeting with the trade union on Reunerth this afternoon, in order to secure the materials needed to rebuild the fleet,” Hux says, gesturing with one buttered scone in his hand.

Kylo sips his caf, partially mulling over this information - Reunerth has a decent metropolis with a disproportionate underbelly, maybe he could go there - but also reveling in the caf. It’s bitter and strong and an objectively terrible experience and gives him a weird jitter if he drinks too much too fast, but he drinks it because he can. Because no one is here to tell him to refrain for training or focus. Because he’s Supreme Leader, now.

“Will we meet with the representatives in the city?” Kylo asks, setting his mug down.

“I imagine so, unless you’d like to call them up to the destroyer.”

“No, we should visit. Maybe with some fighters, in case they think we’re weak after this mess.” Hux looks pleased with this foresight, and it’s a pleasant change from his constant judgmental anxiety. Kylo is just glad he can act on his own personal conspiracy.

 

Kylo has spent enough years standing menacingly in the background that even without the mask he fills the role well, sitting at the head of the table with Hux to his right. Hux discusses the details of their demands, pausing every few minutes to get Kylo’s explicit support, and Kylo watches the mix of greed, fear, and frustration on the faces of the union representatives.

At the end, after Hux exudes a sense of victory beneath his unmoved expression, Kylo adds with an innocuous gesture of his hand, “And you’ll give us lodging in the city tonight.” 

“And we’ll give you lodging tonight,” the chief representative says.

“You’ll arrange for the Menagerie, top floors.”

“We’ll arrange for the Menagerie, top floors.”

Kylo rests his hand on the table again, drumming his fingers casually. “Thank you, gentlemen. The Order will not forget your hospitality.” Hollow words rehearsed from years and years of watching his mother, Luke, Snoke. Diplomacy is a practice in platitudes. Luckily Hux seems to enjoy doing most of it. 

The representatives nod, rise from the table, and leave. Hux watches them, and then rounds on Kylo. “What was that?” 

Kylo blinks at him. “Hm?”

Hux stares at him, lips pursed, and then shakes his head, also rising from his seat. “Nevermind. Another one of your mystical arts; I understand. It was foolish of me to think you wouldn’t use them in your _very first negotiation_ as Supreme Leader. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll return to the ship. Enjoy your newfound rooms.”

Kylo allows Hux to walk almost to the doors before: “General.” The footsteps stop. “If you believe I’ll sleep planetside while you sit beyond the cannons of the Finalizer, you’re mistaken.” 

He stands from his seat, knowing Hux has turned to watch him, and spends a long moment looking out through the tall windows on the other side of the table: a bustling industrial city with the sun about to set. He’s looking forward to it already. Then he walks for the door, and when he passes Hux, the man falls into step beside him. 

“Ren - ” Hux starts; Kylo gives him a look, and he clears his throat. “Supreme Leader, if you wanted to spend some time on a soot-covered planet of miners and droids, who am I to int—”

“Did I make this sound negotiable?” Kylo says as the troopers join them and they all step into the lift at the end of the corridor. “You’re taking one of the rooms, General.”

Hux sets his shoulders and folds his hands behind his back. Kylo’s one that argument; now Hux is about to change the subject. “Will you be coming to the dinner tonight?”

Kylo shakes his head. “No. I’ll be resting.”

“Resting,” Hux echoes with the same disbelief he always has when Kylo says he’s retiring early. But he doesn’t argue the point.

 

After night falls and the city starts to pick up - a wild, growing energy unlike anything on the flagship - Kylo pulls on the greatcoat he grabbed from the laundry the day before. Black gaberwool, warm and plain enough with the patch ripped off the shoulder. He takes a moment to look at himself in the mirror of the penthouse foyer, curious as to the lines it cuts across his shoulders and down his sides. With the collar popped high and hiding the curve of his jaw, he might yet go incognito without the Force to help. He indulges in one moment of vanity, raking his hand through his hair. (Because he can.)

Then he steps into the hallway, lined on one side with a giant wide window that showcases the bright, multi-colored skyline, a hodgepodge of skyscrapers and industrial factors and lopsided slums. In the middle of the hallway sits Hux, leaning back in an armless chair he must have dragged from the desk in his own room, holding a half-burned cigarette in one hand. 

“Going somewhere, Supreme Leader?” Hux asks, not looking at him, and takes a drag of his cigarette. 

The excuses lie at the tip of his tongue, rehearsed, and instead he goes with: “Wherever I damn well please.” There’s no satisfaction in it - he’s reminded too much of Han - but he walks for the lift anyway, hands in the pockets of his coat. 

As he gets closer, Hux turns his head, looks him up and down, and raises an eyebrow. “You’re wearing our uniform, now? Should I take it as a sign of your loyalty to our cause?” Hux is getting bold with his mockery, Kylo thinks, and yet he doesn’t have the time or focus to care, tonight: relief lies not more than half a mile from this hotel, a bustling red-light district, nameless exchanges of Order credits, a chance to reclaim himself in full. He sets his jaw, doesn’t answer, and keeps walking. 

He walks behind Hux’s chair, still focused on the lift doors, when a gloved hand catches him by the arm, firm and strong. Kylo stops out of surprise and looks down to see Hux looking up at him, turned in his seat, one hand reached out towards Kylo’s arm. The cigarette continues to smolder; Hux takes another drag of it.

“What is it you’re looking for, Ren?” Hux asks, in a soft voice that is both chilling and--something else. (He pushes that thought aside; he’s so close getting out, getting what he needs.) “Drugs, drink, or whores?”

All three together sound like an even better evening that he’d planned. “It’s none of your business.” He pulls his arm lightly, expecting the grip to yield. It doesn’t. Hux’s grip remains iron-tight, and now he stands, standing so close that Kylo can see the circles under his eyes.

“Why else would you want to stay the night? There’s nothing more to get in this city. You don’t need a droid ship or twenty tons of transparisteel,” Hux says, flicking the cigarette off to the side. “And you’ve ordered me here to keep you safe.”

“From your temptation to eliminate me in a ‘mining accident.’” Kylo wrenches his arm back out of Hux’s grip and steps back so he can breathe (and not fixate on the hint of copper stubble on Hux’s chin). “Go back to your room and sleep, Hux. If you’re lucky, I’ll be gutted in an alley, and you can have this mantle for yourself.”

“You ingrate,” Hux stalks up to him, and for a moment Kylo thinks he just wants to intimidate him with proximity, again, so he holds his ground - then Hux reaches out and grabs him by the lapel of the greatcoat he forgot he was wearing - too many folds that are easy to grab - and jerks him even closer. “I could have killed you twenty-six times since you were declared: on Crait, through your caf, in the lift today - but I’ve already committed to the Order, committed to protecting you.” He pushes Kylo up against the wall, and Kylo is too curious to see how far his insubordination will go to stop him. 

“This includes making sure you don’t destroy yourself now that no one is holding your leash. Do you think you’re the only man who’s suddenly come into power? Even a modest windfall will leave the weak-willed drunk, broke, and diseased.” Hux’s energy permeates a fierce determination that blazes bright, even against the backdrop of the city’s energy, and Kylo marvels at it. “So which is it, Supreme Leader? Drugs, drink, or,” his eyes fall to Kylo’s lips, “whores?”

Maybe he doesn’t need to go on the hunt for someone both skilled and discreet, or to expend his restless energy keeping himself cloaked in a crowd. Or maybe he just needs to see how far Hux will go with him. “...would you get me any of them? All of them?”

Hux tilts his head in a light shrug. “All, if that’s what you want.” No surprise in his expression, but no disdain, either.

“It’s not.” His hand comes up to take Hux by the wrist, the one near his lapel, and push some room between them. Hux budges, barely, enough for Kylo to feel like he can take a full breath, but his shoulders are still tense and a part of him questions where this is a good idea. (It’s not, he knows, but bad ideas feel like another indulgence, too.) “I only want -- someone to be there.” It already sounds weak to his ears, and he hates it.

“Someone,” Hux echoes, and he’s studying Kylo so closely in his discomfort that Kylo can’t meet his gaze. He feigns nonchalance by staring over Hux’s shoulders at the skyline, the city still so close and available. “Anyone?”

“You.” There’s a part of him that likes the warmth of Hux standing so close; another that admires the fierce energy of him; and yet another that is tentatively hopeful that if this works with Hux, then surely it could work with anyone. 

“Me?” Hux replies with a surprise so false Kylo is sure that he’s meant to see through it.

Now, he can level an unimpressed gaze at Hux, and do his best to ignore the faint smirk and the self-satisfaction. “You can refuse, and I can continue with what I was doing.”

Hux twists his wrist out of Kylo’s grip and Kylo allows it, watching as Hux rubs the ache out of it with his other hand. “I’m only surprised that you would pick me, of all people, to watch your exhibition.”

“It isn’t exhibition,” he says, and sighs, because really what else could he call it? “But someone needs to be there. Wouldn’t you prefer it was you, and not someone I found on the street? Avoid the scandal?”

Hux snorts as he turns away from Kylo. “Maybe you _are_ learning,” he says, walking over to the chair still sitting in the middle of the hallway. He stops beside it, rests a hand on the curved back, and then looks over his shoulder towards Kylo. “Well? Take a seat.”

Kylo feels like five years of memories are over-layed before his eyes, each one uniquely uncomfortable and humiliating in their own way, so similar to this, and yet with one key difference. He could walk away if he likes. “Here?” he asks, voice steady.

“Do you need something more comfortable? The windows are polarized; no one can see you. The lift is frozen to my voice commands. If you need something else - ”

“No.” Kylo is already walking towards the chair, taking his greatcoat off to drape it over the back. With the shirt he borrowed replacing his sleeves and tunic, the air feels cooler than it would have, and his skin prickles beneath the fabric. He pulls off his gloves, drops them on the ground, and rolls up his sleeves. Hux watches from beside him, just behind his shoulder. 

He's long practiced in mechanical, disinterested disrobing: Hux's presence doesn't change that, though Kylo does feel a shift in murky thoughts from his direction. Kylo has ignored more in similar situations, though. He unbuckles the belt that comes with these uniform trousers, unbuttons, unzips, and takes out his cock, already half-hard.

“Ah,” Hux says.

Kylo’s brow furrows, and he looks up to see Hux staring at his cock, his gaze only a second too slow to meet Kylo’s. “What is it? Too small for you?”

Hux snorts. “Has anyone described that as small?” There’s a lightness to his voice belied by a noticeable red tint in his cheeks. “No, not in the least. But I’m only here to watch, as you’ve said.” 

There's something else he's not saying, but Kylo brushes that aside as he looks back at the window and the city. It should be easy with so much life on display, he thinks, regardless if Hux is here. He doesn't have to worry about Hux; he doesn't have to impress him. There's nothing the man can do that Kylo can't combat, even with his dick in one hand. 

There's no arms on this chair, so Kylo keeps his other hand in a loose fist on his thigh (ready). The last thing he focuses on is the lit line of a huge crane that arches over a portion of the city, pulsing purple and soothing. Then he closes his eyes.

Across the landscape of the Force, Hux is there beside him, but there's so much more around them: everyone on every floor of this hotel, traders doing business in the buildings next door, miners looking for a drink and others looking for miners. It's new, it's raw, it's everyone that every figure in his life has tried to keep him from - even Han, the criminal that he was. And for good reason: emotions never seem to be in one place for long, so instead of wading into a steady stream he's caught by rapids, the eddies catching and threatening to drag him under.

A bare hand slides over the back of Kylo's neck and he lurches forward in his seat, eyes snapping open as his sense of self rushes back. This has never - _what has he done wrong_ \- 

“Nothing to fear,” Hux says from behind his shoulder. “It's only me. Continue.”

His fist clenches against his thigh. He leans back in the chair again. Hux’s hand doesn’t move. “You don’t need to touch me,” Kylo mutters.

“Tell me to stop, then.”

He doesn’t, because why should he? What threat is it? Why does he need to keep Hux at a distance? He’s only a man--with an entire fleet, the support of nearly all the upper command, an encyclopedic knowledge of the Order’s business dealings throughout the galaxy, a great mouth--

Kylo closes his eyes, shifts his hand, and starts again, not quite from scratch, as his thoughts meander over every fine point he has ever noticed about Hux, from the color of his hair to the polish of his boots to the way he sounds when he’s angry. But there’s an entire city, an entire _planet_ to pull his inspiration and emotions from, Kylo reminds himself: smugglers and whores, dens of illegality where music and passion mingle among clouds of smoke and lies, people living through the Force and not even knowing it.

Or so he’s been told. It’s always been too much to even approach, and if Snoke had known he lingered--

“You’re terrible at this,” Hux says, his voice close to Kylo’s ear now, his hand shifted on Kylo’s neck so that his fingers lie disturbingly close to Kylo’s jaw with a soft, warm touch. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

Kylo huffs, frustrated, his fingers squeezing tight around his cock as his pace slows, distracted. He opens his eyes and sees Hux has bent over by his side, looking at him, their gazes level. “What makes you such an expert?” 

“Every man is an expert, Ren, assuming they don’t spend their formative years as Force-trained ascetics under cruel masters,” Hux says, self-satisfied, and if Kylo didn’t have his dick in hand he might have punched him run in the mouth. (He’s not wrong; even with Luke, with thin walls and a familial-cum-pedagogical bond, a thousand responsibilities…)

Then Hux’s hand closes around his hand. Not the one that’s out of the way on his thigh. Kylo sits up but otherwise tries not to move, unsure what Hux intends - Kylo wonders whether he should have done something about that blade he keeps in his sleeve - but then Hux moves their hands in one long stroke from shaft to head. Kylo’s vision unfocuses as he takes a shuddering breath.

“Longer strokes,” Hux tells him in that still soft voice as he guides Kylo’s hand back down again. Kylo thinks he might die. “And if you must, some pressure along the way.” Another upstroke, this time Hux tightening that leading ring between Kylo’s thumb and forefinger, like his entire being will narrow to a single point of concentrated pleasure.

And then he takes his hand away; Kylo bites his lip, and the pain keeps a whine from escaping him. “Try it, now,” Hux says, so close that Kylo can feel Hux’s breath against his cheek, before Hux stands straight again and all Kylo can see in his periphery is the shine of Hux’s belt buckle. How can he not take this suggestion? This longer stroke and the careful squeeze—he doesn’t know why it feels so, so good.

It’s just the friction, the quiet, his own self in totality - and Hux’s hand, still on his neck. That hand caresses up the back of his ear and into his hair, fingers massaging the back of his scalp. “Take your time,” Kylo thinks he hears Hux say. Kylo doesn’t even know what time is anymore, or whether he’s in or outside of it. All he focuses on is the build up of tension, that coiling he remembers but of his body, too, now, and the warmth that spreads out under his skin and sets him apart from the Force, above it. 

Then he feels it - that craving for something he doesn’t want, habits so ingrained that they might be written into his bones, now. This is the best he’s felt in a long, long time, yet he still knows he can’t step over the edge on his own.

Kylo huffs another breath of frustration. Should he, shouldn’t he? How more intimate could they already get, now that he’s felt Hux’s hand on his cock - and even the thought of that, again, brings him close to the edge. But not quite.

He tilts his head back and looks up to see Hux looking down at him, mildly curious without his usual disdain. “Yes?” Hux says, calm, unaffected. “I’m still watching.” 

“I need - “ (He’d rather fly his Silencer into a sun than have this conversation.) “Can you - ”

“Complete sentences, Supreme Leader. Don’t give half orders.”

Kylo squeezes his eyes shut briefly, feeling amazing and wretched and desperate for it all to end. “He would - Snoke would - give me - ” And he can’t kriffing say it, the true tragedy of his training, which will be his undoing: pent up with energy from all these failures, he’ll bursts at the seams. They’ll find him in a hundred pieces all over the shower, bits of dust and rage. 

“...oh.” Hux’s fingers curl and tighten in Kylo’s hair. When he opens his eyes again, he sees Hux’s gaze rake down his disheveled form, lingering on either his moving hand or the shallow rise and fall of his chest, and then he looks back at Kylo. “He’d hold you to his word that closely, is that it?”

Kylo swallows hard before his lips part again, panting softly in his torment. “Hux—”

“Let me give you a welcome present, Supreme Leader,” Hux says as his free hand slides over the exposed column of Kylo’s throat, a gentle pressure that keeps him focused on Hux’s face. He’s so close they could kiss; Kylo wants nothing more in the galaxy, except permission.

“You may come, tonight,” Kylo starts to lose himself, relief washing over him, but he can’t look away from Hux’s face. He’s still speaking, and the words filter through the roar, so damnably calm. “Tonight, and every other night, and morning—whenever you need—but you’ll always see my face in that moment.” His hand tightens on Kylo’s throat. “Won’t you?”

“Yes,” Kylo breathes, before the rest of him crumbles. 

 

He might have blacked out at some point, the memory is hazy later, but he will remember sitting slumped in that armless chair, leaned to one side so that his forehead presses against the cool metal of Hux’s buckle. One hand combs slowly through his hair; the other holds a newly-lit cigarette. There’s a warm spice in the scent that Kylo likes, but he doesn’t ask for it. He’s not sure he can speak.

“Being Supreme Leader will require much from you, Ren,” Hux says as his fingertips brush back damp hair from Kylo’s temple, “but you will also have everything you need, if you only ask.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](http://cutequirk.tumblr.com).


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